Just finished 'Townie' by Andre Dubus III. A hyped memoir from 2011 I got on the remainder table. Pretty good. He nicely details his rough, AC/DC magic-marker-on-jean-jacket-upbringing. A wimpy son of an up-and-coming short-story/novelist, and absent father, he nicely describes growing up in various tough mill-town Mass. cities. The first 2/3rds of the book are really good, as our guy gets his shit together and decides to fight back, but the book falters when he decides to become a writer (like his dad!) and the road to doing so. No doubt he can now write - too bad he couldn't have polished that part of this book. 7/10

Parker, I just took a look at this book. I confined my focus to Wilker's discussions of Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Hegel. I've done reading on the so-called secularization thesis (for example, through engagements with, among others, Charles Taylor and Michael Gillespie). Although Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Hegel are, among others, extremely influential in the rise of secular liberal democracy, this is no groundbreaking secret. So I thought that if Wilker could acquit himself well in interpreting these notoriously difficult thinkers, the rest of his book might be interesting. Unfortunately, with regard to these thinkers the author has no idea what he's talking about. He puts forward the standard, blockhead reading of Machiavelli's Prince, and fails to note its more nuanced rendering, famously done by both Diderot and Rousseau, as a subtle critique of power in the guise of a guide for power (if the goal is to control the populace through coercion, fear-mongering, and rhetorical cunning, it's probably best to keep these strategies sub rosa). Wilker's treatment of Hobbes is just as bad. He fails to distinguish between law, license, liberty, and right (often conflating 'right' with the former terms -- an inauspicious exegetical sign). And his exposition of Hegel, though brief, exhibits major interpretive problems that would be too tedious to go into. These, albeit limited and localized, problems lead me to the conclusion that the book is less scholarly than polemical; and polemics is the last refuge of a dilettante.

Parker, I just took a look at this book. I confined my focus to Wilker's discussions of Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Hegel. I've done reading on the so-called secularization thesis (for example, through engagements with, among others, Charles Taylor and Michael Gillespie). Although Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Hegel are, among others, extremely influential in the rise of secular liberal democracy, this is no groundbreaking secret. So I thought that if Wilker could acquit himself well in interpreting these notoriously difficult thinkers, the rest of his book might be interesting. Unfortunately, with regard to these thinkers the author has no idea what he's talking about. He puts forward the standard, blockhead reading of Machiavelli's Prince, and fails to note its more nuanced rendering, famously done by both Diderot and Rousseau, as a subtle critique of power in the guise of a guide for power (if the goal is to control the populace through coercion, fear-mongering, and rhetorical cunning, it's probably best to keep these strategies sub rosa). Wilker's treatment of Hobbes is just as bad. He fails to distinguish between law, license, liberty, and right (often conflating 'right' with the former terms -- an inauspicious exegetical sign). And his exposition of Hegel, though brief, exhibits major interpretive problems that would be too tedious to go into. These, albeit limited and localized, problems lead me to the conclusion that the book is less scholarly than polemical; and polemics is the last refuge of a dilettante.

I'm sure you are aware of these much better books:

yeah, I am aware of those books...

I haven't really read anything from Wilker, but from what you are saying, Wilker should "stay in his lane" so to speak.I'm interested in this book due to what I see on a day to day basis.

Compellingly original in its conceit, Brennert's sweeping debut novel tracks the grim struggle of a Hawaiian woman who contracts leprosy as a child in Honolulu during the 1890s and is deported to the island of Moloka'i, where she grows to adulthood at the quarantined settlement of Kalaupapa.

Just finished Jane Leavy's The Last Boy, a biography of Mickey Mantle. Mantle was a hero, back when we used to have heroes - not the celebrity trash/cash whore hybrids we have these days - and Leavy looks at what made Mickey Mick. What she finds is not always pretty or bow-wrapped, revealing a physically gifted man with a badly damaged psyche who tried to be everything to everyone except himself and those closest to him. Mick was confusingly self-denying, self-absorbed and self-destructive - almost mythological in his hubris, his downfall and his redemption. Leavy's book is unequivocally biased, though not a hagiography, and it's non-linear narrative helps rather than hinders itself. I finished the book both impressed and saddened by the object man and, even more telling, I wished I'd met him. Recommended.